Business Need

Peoples Health, a Medicare Advantage health insurance organization, wanted to achieve a "Five Star” plan rating. This is the highest quality and performance standard from the federal government that demonstrates excellence in customer satisfaction and quality of care. This rating has a direct relationship with the monetary incentives a Medicare organization receives from the government.

Complex strategic programs were underway with CEO visibility and under tight regulatory timeframes.

I joined the organization to develop a new consultative PMO with the purpose of providing guidance to leadership, vice presidents, functional directors and managers in the planning and implementation of those projects.

Challenges

1. Directors and functional managers were stretched too thin between project management responsibilities and daily operations. This prevented them from focusing on more detailed work required to effectively initiate, plan, execute, monitor progress and close projects, and delayed approvals, starts, completions and synchronization of projects.

2. No user adoption of project management tool. The application of methodology in real life was also absent despite 80 employees having attended various trainings provided by the organization. 

3. Poor visibility of the amount of company-wide projects underway, their complexity, size, business value, cross-department dependencies or alignment with organizational strategy. 

4. The PMO was recently created and had no staff to fulfill its goals.

Approach

People: I interviewed 30 directors, managers and their staff to learn about their needs, wants and context in which they were operating. My goal was to have a realistic understanding of project management methods from their point of view to design the type of support that the PMO will provide. 

Process: I delivered customized coaching with hands-on support from concept to delivery. This allowed for establishing trust and letting executive and management staff see the benefits of applying best practices, standardizing processes and taking advantage of the services of the PMO. 

Tools: I partnered with the Education and Training department to assess how many employees took the training on the project management tool, when, and their roles. I planned and led usability testing as a prototype with 7 users for standalone and enterprise versions.

Results

• The strategic programs and projects of the organization were delivered within scope, schedule and budget. Peoples Health achieved the Five Star rating, which represented $10M in revenue.

• This successful working model for operations was validated; built from the user experience rather than administrative top down. Three tool prototypes helped to identify blockers, non-value-added tasks, and gaps in the effective planning, execution and monitoring of projects.

• Transparency and alignment with enterprise-wide inventory and analysis of 100 projects. Recommendations for continuous improvements and PMO user-centered roadmap.

• PMO staff; new project coordinators were hired, trained and mentored with the knowledge about project management and understanding of the organization's user needs.